Quiet Professionals, Noisy Machinery

X Products AR Can Launcher

There’s modular, and there’s crazy modular. Here’s an AR upper with a twist — it contains a plugged, ported barrel, and launches an ordinary 12 oz. soft drink can out to 100 yards. Coming soon from X Products, you can preorder it (as an upper) now with a $20 deposit.

More fun than anyone should have… The Can Cannon is a patent pending launching device that uses a propriatary gas ported barrel and pressure tube to launch heavy, thin wall objects, without burning a hole in them or directing hot gas directly into them. Currently set up for launching full un-opened 12oz soda cans, when used with standard mil spec blanks it can reach an average distance of 105 yards!
Why would you launch a soda can? Because it’s fun! Plus, it’s an incredibly fast and fun decoy to shoot at. Every demonstration leads to more smiles and laughs than any product we’ve ever introduced. BATFE approved design is not considered a Destructive Device or firearm.

Expected cost of the whole thing will be $399 or less (again, this is upper only) and it works with GI M200 blanks.

X Products is, of course, well known for its line of 50-round drum magazines for ARs and various other rifles in 5.56, 7.62 and 9mm. One is shown above in the Can Launcher, and the one below is in a Black Rain Ordnance AR.

The metallic X Products drums are heavy for a 50-round mag, but reliable (although they can be… selective… about the supposedly-STANAG weapons they’ll work with, X is pretty up-front with this information).

You’re probably wondering a few things. Like: how does X make this work? And how did they get ATF to sign off on this as a non-gun? And we wouldn’t be Weaponsman.com if we didn’t have answers for you.

That big, soda-can-caliber cylinder threads on like a free-floating fore-end, but the barrel of this AR is radically different. It’s short, and ported, and capped. When you drop a can in, it rests on the cap and creates a de-facto high-pressure-low-pressure system like that going on inside a 40mm grenade.

The blank’s high pressure in the barrel exits through the ports into the large area behind the can, pressurizing it and sending the can downrange with a satisfying toonk!

The pressure in the “low pressure chamber” behind the can is sufficient to launch the can.

The ATF, for their part, appears satisfied that the capped blanks-only barrel is not intended for live-ammunition use. (And indeed, if you tried it, you would not be pleased with the result).

There are videos of this in action at the link above. So, how much did we like it? Enough to put ourselves down for one:

We have absolutely no earthly, practical use for the thing (X Products suggests launching decoys for training gun dogs, but our dog only thinks he’s big enough to do that). But we are buying it because it’s neat, it will be fun if we can figure out where to shoot it, and because imagination ought to be encouraged, and we know no better encouragement than the profit motive.

My biggest question is how fast could we actually get that thing moving? That’s a lot ( A LOT) of payload to accelerate. What sort of recoil will it generate?
How much can the platform take?
How much can the human platform take before it bloodys your nose and knocks you out?

Because no one will find or make a suitable-sized glass bottle, and fill it 87 octane, dish soap, and aluminum glitter, and a lit bit of rag, and launch it 100Y downrange.
Nor do the same thing with a canister of bearspray OC.
Or fill an empty soda can with ball bearings and black powder or substitute, light the cannon fuse, and fire it downrange. (Gawd help you if you get a hangfire.)

There’s a video out there of a Syrian having a misfire with a shotgun converted to launch pipe bombs. He whipped that contraption around like he was casting for bass and rid it of the bomb, laughing the whole time.

The typical aluminum soda can relies on its filling to give it strength in compression and shear. That’s why Big Jake Jakovenko was so impressive for his rumored ability (I say rumored because I never saw it with my own eyes, but I heard about it a lot) to tear full beer cans in two. Empty cans, lots of guys could do.

Absolutely, some materials are strong in compression but not in tension… and some vice-versa. The alloy beverage can is much like the chicken’s egg. The shell of the egg needs the yolk and white inside for what little strength it has….

Couldn’t help myself, I had a classical education: Leonardo daVinci’s notebooks, and the humor of George Carlin:
“Consider the flamethrower. Proof that somewhere sometime, someone decided, “I’d really like to set those people over there on fire, but I can’t quite get close enough.”

And in discussions on a hog-culling thread elsewhere, it strikes me that loading a suitable canister with tannerite would enable one to launch a muzzle safe piece of ordnance downrange, and then allow a second shooter to helpfully detonate it once it lands. And if it had been thoughtfully encased in a layer of ball bearings, nails, nuts & bolts, etc., well, doom on whoever.

i regret to inform our host that, upon her seeing the item in question, Household 6 decreed we needed one immediately, and gave up the sacred purchasing numbers to complete the order then and there.

i am heartbroken over it all…

i’d also point out, based upon personal experience, that IMI blanks, loaded as M-200 equivalents, have (or at least had) a hotter charge than the Lake City equivalent, which should result in improved range/performance with this wonderful invention. i’ll have to peruse the Shotgun News to see if they are readily available still.

and has anyone considered the terminal ballistics of a can with *frozen* contents, at least on a human torso?

next up: if you cut the top off a can, and insert a suitably sized bottle into it….

There are a variety of sites out there, including ones that have the ammo TMs, explaining how to make grenade launching blanks as well as regular blanks. There are some real safety issues in play re: Pressure.

I talked to Dewey at X Products for a while today and this could be the departure point for a series of launchers for various things. That was not a great master plan but people keep asking if they can make it do X. Like firefighters launching a grapnel, their current launcher has a max slant range of maybe 100′. They’re also looking at making it safer (i.e., working with special blanks and not capable of chambering any standard round) in future versions.

Looking forward to watching the development of this thing. Lots of potential.

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WeaponsMan is a blog about weapons. Primarily ground combat weapons, primarily small arms and man-portable crew-served weapons. The site owner is a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S), and you can expect any guest columnists to be similarly qualified.

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